4.16.2025

Snow again this morning. Fresh crunchy coat on the hydrant and car and adolescent tree struggling to push its buds out. Were I a lazier man I would find an excuse to stay inside. But there's work to do and an office space I’m paying for and the laundro needs doing. Still: poor show, Montreal. Going in your file.

The poubelle is missing. I put it out with the organic waste two nights ago and it never came back. I don’t know whether to ask the host about it or not. Cultural delicacies to be navigated at every turn. Whither the poubelle!

Downside to learning a language: what used to be background noise is now words and phrases and my dendrites reach out like heliotropic algae toward the sound in an effort to distinguish nouns from verbs. I cannot write with other voices around me. When I jam my ears with wordless music I can remain in stasis for days.

Dreams: I am expected somewhere and I can’t get there. Or I am expected in several places and I've lost my keys or the door code. Or I am the former president, the one most of us like more than other recent presidents, wandering through a neighborhood at night trying not to be noticed. Oh you have to at least let them see you, someone says. They'll be upset if you don't.